Severed Green: a Pandemic-Born Structure
Severed Green: a Pandemic-Born Structure

Summary/Abstract: An open letter signed by a large group of Romanian cultural NGOs and published in Scena.ro review (no. 49 (3)/2020) signaled the danger of disappearance of the entire independent cultural sector. The authors reported the authorities’ lack of involvement concerning this sector’s support during the pandemic crisis, the inability of those in a decisional position to understand how it functions or the fact that the artists working here are the innovators that the culture urgently needs. Indeed, the Coronavirus pandemic has hit hard the independent cultural sector, as well as the one formed by entrepreneurs, small or medium-sized businesses. The prolongation of the state of emergency, the new regulations concerning the functioning of performance halls at the capacity of 30-50-70% depending on the evolution of the pandemic have brought the cultural organizations at the brink of bankruptcy. The uncertainty of living and project continuity has existed in our society even under what we now call ”normal conditions”, but in the last two years, this uncertainty increased dramatically. That is why the condition of the Romanian independent artist draws near to the precariat class - a concept widely theorized by the economist Guy Standing - who calls it a dangerous class by the authorities' tendency to ignore it, pushing it into the trap of insecurity, debt and humiliation. Most of the time, however, the freedom of creation is born of external constraints. Independent artists were once again forced to take risks and give birth to hybrid artistic experiments - new forms that renegociate the relationship with the spectators, space and even their own bodies. This presentation aims to analyze the manner in which the work on the show Severed Green (produced by Pro Theatre Association, Zalău, 2020) managed to propose a new dramaturgical direction, which the artistic team named it documented theatre. Situated at the congruence of documentary and classical forms, documented theatre represented a liberating discovery for the practitioners.

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